Zhang Featured in AAS Journal Author Series

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) Journal Author Series recently featured Yun Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher at UMD’s Planetary Surfaces and Spacecraft Lab. Zhang briefed viewers of the series on her new Planetary Sciences Journal paper, “GTasb3D: A Novel 3D Framework for Modeling Thermal Evolution and Rarefied Flows in Porous Active Small Bodies with Various Shapes.”

Small bodies such as asteroids and comets are of special interest to planetary scientists because of the clues they provide to the formation of the solar system as a whole. Zhang's paper details a new approach to modeling the thermophysical processes that lead to the evolution of volatiles–or readily vaporizable chemical elements and compounds–in such bodies.

The paper’s co-author, Christine Hartzell, is associate professor aerospace engineering at UMD and director of the Planetary Surfaces and Spacecraft Lab.